Quetzaltenango

It’s amazing how accustomed I’ve become to being connected to friends, family, news, acquaintances, noise, etc., all the time. In the course of a day, I rarely let a waking hour pass without checking my email, checking facebook, checking the news, texting a friend or two… In recent years, even when I’ve traveled to such places as Uganda or remote eastern Senegal, I have stayed in fancy hotels with internet connections, and spent my evenings catching up with the world.

And now here I sit in a home in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, not knowing quite what to do with myself sans wifi. My iPhone is at my side, so I know if anyone needs to reach me they can. I could even send texts or log onto the 3G network and get at my email, but with no income at the moment, I’m taking the fiscally responsible course and restraining myself. So this little update will be uploaded sometime tomorrow, I imagine, when I find a café with an internet connection.

I can’t quite say that I’m enjoying being cut off, but I think it’s good for me. I’m reading a lot (currently the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I’m enjoying more than I expected). I’m taking the time to write down my thoughts. It’s good to slow down and quiet one’s mind from time to time. Maybe I’ll even meditate.

For most of the day, my mind was anything but quiet. Being immersed in a foreign language is hard work. After spending the weekend in Antigua (Guatemala Lite), I arrived in Quetzaltenango/Xela Sunday night in time for dinner. My shuttle from Antigua brought me directly to my host family, Maria and Eduardo, a nice couple a little older than my parents (though they seem much older). There are no children in the house, but they have a big dog, Bucanero, and many birds, including a parrot, Francisco. Eduardo is friendly enough, but Maria does most of the talking. Lucky for me, she is used to foreigners, so she speaks very slowly. I almost always understand what she says, at least by the second time. If they speak any English, they haven’t let on—it’s all Spanish all the time.

Monday morning, Maria walked me to my first day at school, about 5 minutes away. The school, La Democracia, is in a house in a residential neighborhood. Students come and go each week, and each student has a teacher to herself or himself from 8:00am to 1:00pm. This week, there are only four students, so the house is not too busy. They expect more students next week.

My teacher, Pablo, is great. He is studying to take the exams to become a lawyer (kinda like the bar exam, I guess), so we have that in common. He promised to teach me words related to the law. When I told him I was an immigration lawyer, he told me about his mother and brother’s ordeals in getting visas to visit the U.S.—similar to the story I heard from Maria. Guatemaltecos, even educated middle class people, view getting a visa as basically a lottery. The immigration officers at the embassy have so much discretion that nobody can guess what their reasoning is for granting some applications and denying others. And everyone here knows all about los illegales in the U.S. and the Arizona law.

In the afternoon, I found my way to the Complejo Deportivo, where there is a nice 25-meter swimming pool. Unfortunately, it is open to the public only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, and conflicts with my class time. I haven’t decided yet whether to try to rearrange my class schedule to allow me to swim a little while I’m here.

I’m not sure what to make of Xela. It certainly doesn’t have the charm of Antigua. The center of the city has some pretty buildings, and the central square is lovely, but most of the streets are not aesthetically pleasing. The surrounding area is beautiful, though, and you can almost always see the green mountains tower over the city in almost every direction. Stay tuned as I explore more over the next 10 days.